Down the rabbit hole

Ah, the joy of work…

The life of a freelancer has its benefits but also it has its shortcomings, so I guess that there is no point for me to brag about the most recent job. I am sorry for the pause, but the latest gig took me by surprise and it literary made me lose the track of time, which created the gap in my blogging. But, that is over now, so I am back and ready to roll.

What has happen since my last blog? Well, not much, except that the number of owners in my neighborhood rose so now the usual contingent is reinforced with smaller but equally annoying doggies and irresponsible (can it be otherwise?) owners. However these new additions are not pure breed, yet rescued ones but for the cats, that really doesn’t matter, because they are all walked off the leash, as humane practice and elevated 21^st century eco- green-spiritual and in sync with the nature, thinking advocates. Never mind the body count…its natural.

Sigh, the craver stays the craver no matter what and where.

On the wider plane, some interesting things had happen. For example, there were two mass fish poisoning here, in which indigenous fish species were reduced to near extinction level. Yet, no one protested, made statement, press conference or anything like that. Not even the NGO sector, which is supposed to keep a watchful eye over the animals. Instead they organized the competition for the best looking stray dogs that got adopted. Yay…The event was sponsored by the fancy doggie food manufacturer, because we all know that the man’s best friend deserves only the best. Here is the link, it’s in Serbian but picture is worth a 1000 words and you will see what I mean, http://orca.rs/vesti/. You will also see that this organization receives the money form the USAID for its efforts, so I think that US tax payers should know where their tax dollars go and how they are spent. And the money is spent on the promotion of doggie bonanza, overpriced marketing campaigns, billboards and posters and zero actual work on the animal and environmental protection. The funniest thing is that they also have the sustainable living banner, so I am guessing that they are getting the money from them too, while all they do is promoting and creating unsustainable living conditions for both animals and humans.

Here is the photo of the dead fish:

http://www.rts.rs/upload/storyBoxImageData/2012/09/29/10606538/pomor_ribe-velika.jpg

The river itself is still poisoned and almost sterilized so with the bird migrations that are currently in progress, the body count is bound to extend to other species. But hey, they are not the dogs, so we don’t care. Wof,wof!!!

Ashes in the snow

A proper song for this reading, to give a little bit of atmo...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwqB-VlveBY

In the past two weeks, I was able to perform a small escapist experiment. By pure chance, I've stayed at my grandma house, in the provincial town. The house is practically abandoned since both my grandma and grandpa passed away a long time ago. However it is still a liveable structure, although it lacks internet connection and the electrical wiring begs for replacement.

The town itself, was a quiet little town but with great potential. It is situated beneath a dead volcano so the scenery and geological structures are very dramatic. It also has a bunch of hot springs and mineral waters that are bottled there. The architecture itself, was old, most of the buildings are built around 1920 or so. Unfortunately, the socialistic period brought the infamous socialistic architecture which is, again, the copy of Charles-Édouard Jeanneret also known as Le Corbusier, mental masturbation, style of architecture which is devoid of all sanity and identity. These buildings are actually, gigantic concrete hives, monolithic boxes that have no connection what so ever with their surroundings. In the US these structures are known as the projects and have many iterations out of which the glass cubes in the form of skyscrapers are the latest one. The general idea behind these monstrosities is to strip a nation of its identity, cause at the time when it was conceived, memories of the horror of World War One were still fresh. The national identity and the whole pre world war one history was seen as the main cause for the war itself. So in a way, this new architecture supposed to strip the nation of its history, thus eliminating the cause for future wars. You know, new building types, new cities...the clean slate. However, this idea was quickly subverted and for one reason only-the buildings were simply super ugly.

But, after the second world war ended, this type of architecture found the fertile ground in the war torn Balkans, and quickly the mindless gigantic box shaped hives started to accommodate new inhabitants. To keep the long story short, the hives hatched the most bizarre behaviour, by creating mindless drones and the one of the secrets of communistic endurance lies exactly in the architecture that produces these drones.

Same thing was done to my provincial town, but the lack of money, stopped the development of the hives.

All that changed, once the mineral water plant was privatised and sold out. For the small town, the sudden cash inflow, meant the only “rational” thing in the free market economy-a housing boom. So the mindless boxing returned. Instead to corner off the historical town centre and make it free of traffic, the overbuilding resumed, wrecking out the architectural fabric of the city. The net end result of this sudden avalanche of modernisation was that in the main street all historical buildings are torn down and instead of yards with trees and flowerbeds new shopping centres and malls were built. The entire city was transformed into the giant shopping mall. And then the sprawl continued towards my neighbourhood. Villas with yards were torn down and replaced with the, slightly scaled down copies of the hives. Those copies were smaller but equally ugly and dehumanising. The yards were paved over with concrete, trees and greenery disappeared and with it the temperature and the noise lever rose.

In order to fill up the void that was created by this, our old friends were brought in. The dogs, the big ones. So the once quiet neighbourhood was transformed into a concrete hive and as the icing on the top of the cake, the noise from the endless barking now echoes between walls of those modernistic structures.

Up on my return to the capital city, I've learned that the stray cat that was living underneath my window, lost all four kittens, due to cars and dog attacks, and that cat colony at the building across mine was destroyed by the new owner with the German shepherd. So instead of one killer now I have two. 

The destruction is complete and once again, points out at the fact that in every process of destruction, dog is always a necessary companion.

Expectation

One of the worst things that happen to me, during my military deployment, was the expectation. You get your orders to go, you know that someone is out there,waiting to kill you and you have to go. The actual shoot out when it happens is a breeze cause you are engaged, adrenaline is pumping and you are nothing more than a well trained animal. Fear and stress come afterwards.

Problem with me is that after the war ended, I am living in that expectation my entire post war life. The expectation that I will be bitten, that I will not be able to sleep, that someone from my family might get bitten. But also cats that I love so much are in constant fear for their lives and I live in a constant expectation that that moment will come where all I could do is to helplessly watch how it gets torn to bits, cause the humane dog (animal) protection law prohibits me to intervene in any case. It is not that I can't do it but the legal consequences are far to grave. Just yesterday a cat was mauled close to my window,AGAIN, by the same dog that has been terrorising the cats for the past seven years. It already racked up 10 of them. The dogcraver doesn't give a shit, as usual, he doesn't have that kind of problem and he is doing this every night for the past seven years at 8pm and 11pm.

Until one day, I've lost my nerve and showed up on my window, by the same time as his dog was chasing the cat which managed to climb up the tree and the dog was barking like 10 feet from my window. I showed up with an axe and said :”With this I like to neuter naughty puppies”. From that moment the dogcraver became aware that his dog might get killed and he started to pay attention. However, he described me as the total nutjob and the insane person. Other dogcravers also made comments about my state of mind. One of those comments is the standard victim-criminal switch, where I am the villain and he is the good guy. But other comment is even more interesting, though.

They all are bothered about the fact that I am protesting for something that is not happening within my apartment aka my own property. The fact that the sound that their dogs are making is violating my property is irrelevant. The fact that they are breaking the animal protection act in front of me is irrelevant. The fact that they are doing this for the past 7 years is irrelevant. I do agree,however, that a man standing with an axe at the window is scary. But not for a second did they ever thought that they are the cause for that. That they are the reason for me holding the axe.

Back to the expectation. The very thought that the dog that can kill you,harm you in the public space, ,for nothing, creates the same expectation that I described at the beginning. And that expectation is what shatters lives. Cause it is unbearable setting to live in. It is unbearable to expect to be be bitten and eaten by the beast in the urban setting. It is bearable to know, that there is a criminal, that there is a mugger, that there is a sex offender but now on top of all that you have jaws.

What is the point of the law, of the law enforcement, what is the point of the government when they all are failing on the basic presumption that human habitat should be safe from carnivore animals.

I mean, why the fuck did we ever left the caves?

Barbarism of the dog owneship

During the 90'es, I've witnessed the total collapse of the state and the order. The old federation was failing on every basis and the system was disintegrating by each passing day. Not only that the meaning of law has been shattered but also the, unwritten, norms of behaviour. As the conditions of living worsen, people lost much of their humanity or should I say, social sanity. They tend to back down to more basic and therefore primitive setting.

So what has happened during the civil war of the 90'es in the neighbourhoods and in the smaller cities was actually an process of de civilisation or tribalisation of the neighbourhoods. Each neighbourhood and its residence became the separate tribe. So each tribe had its own pack that was serving as the protector of that tribe. These tribes actually formed higher form of organisation aka the clans. As the disintegration of the society continued, these clans started to think of a way how to survive in the resource and money scarce environment and they turned to criminal activity. Now by the very definition, the criminal activity exists as such only if the law exist. If there is no law there is no criminal activity.

What happen next, was the logical step that every tribe and every clan had its own rules, that are sometimes perceived as mutually beneficial but sometimes they were cause for conflict. This lead to the explosion of violence in the series of gang wars fought for supremacy over the territory and population. Or to put it simply, for the market.

However, the problem with this course of events, lies in the very nature of the law generation process. The civilised way to do it is to give everyone equal rights to live and to prosper, but in the case of barbaric way the goal is to protect own personal interest from the others, by conditioning the behaviour of the others to be powerless and thus dependant on barbarian. It is not so the matter of choice, if you are not with us you are against us, it is more an request, either you are with us or you don't exist at all.

The role of the dog in this setting is pivotal. The dog can be publicly displayed and thus it enables the person to send the message by creating an image. You don't get the same perception if you see an old woman walking her Beagle and the hooded, tattooed muscle man walking a pit bull. The first impression is that the hood with the pit bull is dangerous while the granny with the beagle is good. However the looks might be deceiving, cause the hood with the pit bull can be an really nice guy and the granny with the beagle can be an serial killer. But the first perception is the one that it counts and that perception states that hood is bad and that granny is good.

This was the primary reason for the explosion of pitbullery in Serbia during the 90'es. A guy that looks like a gangsta and walks his pit bull is the someone you don't want to mess with, you don't want to talk to him, you don't want to look at him. So there was a whole avalanche of these walking billboards that wanted to make an statement that they are bad asses. But since bad ass is essentially an ass, usually when you talk to someone you talk to the head not to the butt.

Since most of those bad asses were actually poor guys that wanted to be seen as rich real gangsta guys, they were seeking ways to make an easy cash. So they started to cash in on their pit bulls. This lead to the emergence of pit bull fighting. It was all fine and dandy until in 1995 in our main boulevard the 4 year old girl didn't lost her face. The pit bulls were banned for one simple reason, it happened in the public place, it was obvious, it was horrific and it couldn't be hidden. So the regime took the swift action and banned the pit bulls. But since the whole regime was based on the perception or image, the pit bull ban was just that, another public relationship stunt. They went illegal and served as the breeding ground and the criminal recruiting operation. The dog fighting became very profitable business and in a sense it is the controlled and conditioned environment where most basic urges and pathology would be satisfied. Kind of a pure alpha male, testosterone furnace, deprived of all cultural and civilisation norms and laws. And as such, in the environment that didn't offered any future what so ever, just an “the eternal present”,that repeats itself in the endless loops, there was no shortage of young, hormonally challenged men, that had no value system to look at,this pseudo barbarism was the only option.

As the regime became more and more isolated from the population the void that was created by this was filled with barbaric practices and barbaric ways. So when it was taken down, the barbarisation took over.

During the 2000-2010 it went trough several stages as it tried to legitimise itself and to become accepted as the normal form of behaviour. But since it can't be cause it is fundamentally opposed to the common good and common interest, everything that it does is nothing more than the pure and total destruction.

So the barbarism of pitbullery spilled over the entire dog ownership and became the norm in the behaviour between dog owners and the public. You will find this in every dog owner/dogcraver regardless if he has a pit bull, golden retriever or a French puddle. The control is rejected by the default, by the default every public space belongs to the dogs and dogcravers, all should bow down before them and all should recognise them as positive and good. No one should ever judge them, because everything they do comes out of love and joy. Everything is justified by the love, endless barking, mauling of cats and smaller dogs, mauling and killing of people, shitting up every single public space, regardless if it is a park, soccer field, river bank or wild nature.

Everything belongs to them and everything is theirs for the taking.

The nature of the beast

Serbian Defence Dog is the perfect example of dog creation and trough it you can see how and why these things come to life, from the imagination to an actual physical entity. So this will be the story of its creation.

This is the official description.

“"The Serbian Defence Dog is a re-creation of the old Serbian Mastiff of the Middle Ages, which became extinct during the early 20th century. Initially disregarded as yet another "cocktail" breed, the SDD is today deservedly a well-known and respected guardian in its native Yugoslavia. It was developed by Nenad Gavrilovic, a Bosnian herbalist and medicine man in the early 1980's, but the final standard was written in 1991. Using his domesticated pack of Serbian wolves, working Bosnian Tornjaks, German Rottweilers, Neapolitan Mastiffs, American Staffordshire Terriers and game-bred Pit Bull Terriers, Gavrilovic created a breed of immense physical strength, fantastic guarding instincts and impressive fighting abilities. Even though it wasn't created with the intention of being a gladiator, the Serbian Defense Dog has achieved legendary status in the dog-fighting circles for being an undefeatable canine warrior. Initial stock was indeed tested in a traditional method of matching potential stud dogs against a number of breeds, but once the bravest and strongest examples were selected for further breeding, no further competitions were held. However, the notoriety of early SOPs as excellent fighters made the breed popular with the criminal element in the Balkans, in whose grip the breed received not only some additional blood of other breeds, but also somewhat of a bad name. Routinely defeating even the most tenacious Pit-Bulls and other fighting breeds, it is believed by many to be unfair matching the Srpski Odbrambeni Pas against any dogs other than members of its own breed, but some fanciers consider this ability to actually be a detractor from other qualities the breed possesses, because the Serbian Defence Dog is a versatile Molosser, capable of handling a great number of duties with ease, as well as being a wonderful urban companion for responsible owners."

This story is a bullshit, but the bullshit must be properly studied in order for the truth to be revealed.

Gloves on,masks on and lets dive.

First thing is that this breed is the re creation of old Serbian Mastiff. As far as I know, there is no such thing in our recorded history. Our records never mention this type of dog or any dog for that matter. But for the sake of argument, lets say that this idiot is right, that this breed existed. He states that this breed got extinct in the early 20^th century. I find this to be an absolute bollocks. The Serbian history is more or less, well documented and it is available on the internet. If you look at the timeline you will see that from the beginning of the 19^th century till the early 20^th century, Serbia was in either in war or in some type of turmoil. And that instability is not the right setting for someone to organise fun doggy orgies in order to re create a piece of history, that never actually existed. So he fails again on the history of the breed.

However, the breeder Nenad Gavrilovic is real and he is the herbalist from Bosnia. Herbalist and medicine man is a fancy word for a witch doctor or a shaman. For him, his beliefs might be the truth but for me they are magical thinking, aka the fantasy. So I think that his fantasy is the main cause for the creation of this dog. Wow, that was easy. Now lets go to the fantasy.

The dog is a status symbol. But in the medieval ages, the role of these dogs was to either be a war dogs or defend the sovereign or the monarch, since only they could afford these dogs. Also they need to be fierce and loyal to the one man and untrustworthy towards anyone else. They are in other words, kings personal bodyguards. So where is the king there is a throne and where is the throne there is a palace. But there is no palace and there is no king, so why make the dog for a king that doesn't exists? The only reason why you would make this breed is, if you have the faith that the king will come and that palace will be built and thus that the kingdom will be created. So for 10 years, the shaman was preparing this gift for the future king. But in 1980 Yugoslavia was still an existing state and it didn't had a king, it had a communist leader Josip Broz Tito.

Well almost, cause in the 1980 Tito died. Josip Broz Tito was the one and only man that was holding the Yugoslavia together and after his death, the process of disintegration started. Somehow I think that this was the main trigger for the shaman to start his magic ritual. Why? Well because the Socialistic Federative Republic of Yugoslavia was built up on ashes of Kingdom of Yugoslavia that was burned down during the second world war, and that kingdom was ruled by the Serbian monarch.

A brief history reality check.

The second world war in the Balkans wasn't the only war that was fought. The second world war was a framework for multiple layers of other wars that were fought within it. The first layer was the war for power, fought between remains of Yugoslavian royal army that fought in the name of the King and their goal was to create Greater Serbia and the communist partisans whom fought for communist idea. The bet was, whom ever survives the war, gets the right to rule. Than there is the third layer, where all the nationalities in Yugoslavia were fighting for their vision of the future. Croats wanted great Croatia, Bosnian Muslims joined them in their fight against Serbian desire to create great Serbia, Albanians in Kosovo wanted to create the Great Albania, Bulgarians wanted to create Great Bulgaria, Hungarians also wanted the Great Hungary and so on and so on. All this fighting were waged with merciless brutality and savagery, causing rivers of blood and mountains of bodies. Thanks to the allied help, the communist partisans won the internal power struggle so when the war ended they took the power. All those unsettled scores were pushed under the rug and the whole thing was covered with massive avalanche of cash. Josip Broz Tito balanced between east and the west, during the cold war and was able to get the money from both sides. So when he died, and he was the only guarantee of stability, the whole thing started to fall apart. So as the money flow was cut off during the 80'es, all those skeletons started to appear. The logical escalation was the destruction of Yugoslavia in the remake of world war 2 hostilities.

And that was the thing that the shaman felt, he saw the war coming. And that is why he made the Serbian Defence Dog. But since Defence actually is another name for war, the second name of the Serbian Defence Dog is Serbian War Dog. But in the age of tanks and jets, the war dog is useless, so why make one? Well if you think about the future, yeah, there is no need for a war dog, but the entire Serbian nationalism is based on the glorious past and the rebuilding of old glory days. So in that context, the war dog, the king lap dog and the king body guard, the king himself and the monarchy, all that is the part of that magical thinking that was the base for the creation of pseudo history, up on which the causes for war were formed. So after ten years, in 1991 war broke out and the Serbian War dog was fully operational.

We all know the rest of the story.

Serbian Defence Dog the T-Rex terrier

But if you thought that pit bull is dangerous, behold the wonders of Serbian genetic engineering, This is the Serbian Defence Dog and pray to God that it doesn't get the export licence for the US.

It is cross breed of: American Staffordshire Terrier, Rottweiler,Neapolitan mastiff,something called Canis montanus which is the mountain shepherd dog, designed to take down bears and the special genetic treat, that came from Hannibal Lecter himself, the Gray Wolf.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/295/dsc03800k.jpg/sr=1

http://s002.radikal.ru/i198/1001/26/086a30e3f2a8.jpg

Note how the fence is weak.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/28/dsci03250007.jpg/sr=1

This one has a special trigger, what ever you do don't ever and I mean EVER look it in the eyes.

Chronicles of absurdity,Act Five "It's good to be an idiot"

The dogcravers accomplished their goal, the Dominion was created and thus the dogtopia came to life. However that didn't stop animal abuse and brutal things started to happen. Dogs were poisoned, beaten and brutalised. First arrests were made on the charge for animal abuse. The accused people didn't had a chance. The first and oldest NGO formed the alliance with similar organisations around the world. During this whole time, absolutely no shelters were built by this organisation. All the money that they got from the donations, went on rescuing the new SUV, the new flat screen HD TV, and some of that money went on bizarre campaigns, billboards and commercials that had zero effect on the population. The greatest success was setting up an call centre for the animals, however this call centre was not for OUR animals, but trough the wonders of technology it was another outsourcing deal for the foreign customers.

During this period, the number of stray dogs sky-rocketed. In 2000 the estimated figure was around 1500, than it rose to 3500 in 2005 and than in 2010 it is estimated that 10.000 mark has been breached. In 2012 this number is likely to be 15.000 to 20.000 if not more.

In my neighbourhood the figure goes like this:

1990 number of stray dogs:2

1991 number of stray dogs:4

1992 number of stray dogs:5

1993 number of stray dogs:4

1994 number of stray dogs:6

1995 number of stray dogs:3

1996 number of stray dogs:4

1997 number of stray dogs:4

1998.number of stray dogs:5

1999 number of stray dogs:4

2000 number of stray dogs:4

2001 number of stray dogs:7

2002 number of stray dogs:6

2003 number of stray dogs:4

2004 number of stray dogs:3

2005 number of stray dogs:7

2006 number of stray dogs:16

2007 number of stray dogs:10

2008 number of stray dogs:10

2009 number of stray dogs:8

2010 number of stray dogs:9

2011 number of stray dogs:7

2012 number of stray dogs:8

However in the other neighbourhoods the numbers are similar. In the nearby vicinity of my neighbourhood, which can be loosely interpreted as 10 block radius, there are around 70 stray dogs and around 130 owned.

The fact that no one keeps the records about stray dogs population is the direct consequence of the loose laws and impotence that was created by this law and due to efforts of NGO sector. The latest addition to the humanism of the dogcravers is the rule that all shelters must be no kill shelters and that only aggressive dogs are terminated, if they fail to pass the behaviour test. Yearly 2000 people are bitten in our capital city while minor bites go unnoticed. This statistic is just for our capital city, in other cities and rural areas, complete chaos rules.

During the 2005 to 2008 the most massive slaughtering of stray cats happen, peaking in August 2006 when one dog managed to kill 12 cats in one month. My local dogcraver whom is THE responsible one for the stray problem, managed to get the dog out of the city, claiming that the dog is good guard dog. Her friend which took the dog was thrilled. However, the dog managed to slaughter one lamb and 12 chickens at the farm.

It was returned to our neighbourhood, but this time it was spayed, but still in the good mood for cracking the cats spines. In addition he is the leader of the new pack of 4 dogs that are lurking across my neighbourhood always in the mood for some kitten munching. The other 4 guard the fast food joint.